Micro

Update: Micro 7.x-1.0-alpha1 is out! It has a useful set of features, but is still quite rough round the edges. Testing/feedback appreciated. See #1477882: Roadmap to 1.0 for development status updates.

Micro is the ultimate lightweight, fieldable entity type for when you just want a "fieldable thing" with no default special properties. The only out-of-the-box properties of micro entities are the entity id ('mid') and bundle ('type') properties.

Features

The functionality of some of the other properties of familiar entity types (eg. nodes) can be implemented using various core and contrib field types:

• You can give your micro types a title using core's Text field type.
• Date (Unix timestamp) fields can be configured to behave like the 'created' property in Nodes, etc.
• Relationships to other entities are implemented using Entity Reference fields.
• Entity Reference fields targeting the user entity type can be configured to behave like the 'author' property in Nodes, etc.

Entity references from micro entities can be listed as:

• A page optionally associated with the target entity as a tab (menu local task) and/or as a link displayed as a pseudo-field in the target entity content.
• A block displayed in a page region as usual, or as a pseudo-field in the target entity content.

Use Cases

• User comments.
• Hierarchical structures (Artist -> Albums -> Songs -> Comments...)
• Facebook/Yammer styled wall.

Required Modules

• Entity API

Recommended Modules

• Entity Reference
• Date

Usage

• Enable Micro and Micro Admin. (The latter is a separate module to allow Features/distribution developers to ship micro types minus the admin UI.)
• Create micro types at admin/structure/micro.
• Administer micro content at admin/content/micro.

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• Entity Construction Kit is much more full-featured and flexible.
• Field Collection and Relation are more targeted to particular use cases.